The Avengers new domestic weekend box office champion with amazing $207.4M debut; Worldwide total now at $654.8M

Update: The final box office data is in and as noted yesterday, Disney turned out to be conservative on their Sunday projection. The Avengers dipped just 18% on Sunday to $57.067M and ended its opening weekend with an even more impressive record-setting $207.439M. The Avengers launched to $80.814M on Friday (including $18.7M from midnights — a new record for a superhero movie) and declined less than 14% on Saturday to $69.558M. As previously reported, Saturday and Sunday’s numbers are records, while Friday’s opening day is good for 2nd all-time.

Not surprisingly, overseas grosses also turned out to be even stronger than projected yesterday, with the film adding another $157.4M for a new worldwide total of $654.839M ($207.439M domestic / $447.4M foreign).

In just three days of domestic release, The Avengers has already passed the lifetime domestic grosses of The Incredible Hulk ($134.807M), “Captain America: The First Avengers” ($176.655M) and “Thor” ($181.031M). The opening weekend gross is also more than the combined opening weekends of those three movies ($207.439M vs. $186.196M). Other records broken by The Avengers included fastest film to reach $200M (3 days) and highest grossing opening weekend (IMAX), and The Avengers also passed “Iron Man 2” ($623.933M) to become the biggest grossing Marvel film worldwide.

Original article follows below.

Hulk SMASH record!

Joss Whedon’s superhero team-up movie The Avengers crushed expectations to gross an amazing estimated $200.3M in its domestic debut this weekend. Disney says the new record holder opened to $80.517M on Friday from 4,349 theaters (including $18.7M from Thursday midnights at approximately 2,500 theaters–a new record for a superhero movie), edged down just 13.4% on Saturday to an estimated $69.7M (a new record) and Disney is projecting a 28.1% dip on Sunday to $50.1M. That would bring the film’s 3-day opening weekend total to $200.3M.

The previous 3-day record holder was last Summer’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” ($169.189M). Although the Friday gross was not a record — that’s still held by ‘Deathly Hallows Part 2’ at $91.071M — The Avengers holds new Saturday and Sunday records and it holds those records quite convincingly. The previous Saturday record was $51.337M for 2007’s “Spider-Man” and the previous Sunday record was $43.596M for 2008’s “The Dark Knight”.

Incredibly, Disney’s Sunday projection could be on the conservative side. Based on previous Marvel properties, The Avengers could dip as low as 15 or so percent on Sunday which puts its Sunday gross potential somewhere in the neighborhood of $50-58M. Based on that history, I’d say Marvel’s The Avengers‘ ceiling for the weekend is $205-209M.

Overseas added another $137.5M Fri-Sun for what is now an incredible estimated $441.5M total from foreign box office alone. Add in the current estimated $200.3M domestic from the film’s 3-day opening and The Avengers is already at $641.8M worldwide.